Paranoid about the paranoics

I've been remembering the frustrating conversation I had at a wine tasting a while back.  One thing this annoying person said is that he has a gun in his house to defend himself against the government when they try to take away all his rights.

Even though the Berkeley world in which I am now so immersed does not trust the government, I don't live in an environment where the government is seen as a threat to be armed against.  But I know there are many parts of the country where government is so mistrusted, so hated, that people would like it to go away, and they proudly maintain their guns for the opportunity to return to the natural order of things.

This is the source of the Tea Party movement.  Every morning I wake up and hear on NPR about the (potential for, and now real) government shutdown.  It frustrates me because of the premise embedded in the discussion: that government should not be shut down.  The disconnect between this premise and that of the Tea Party frightens me for the future.

The Tea Party wants radically smaller government.  And they've won.  The sequester: we are still functioning under radically reduced government funding.  The government shutdown: radically reduced government funding.  Support for food programs is vanishing.  NPR presents this as a terrible impact of the shutdown.  The Tea Partiers are cheering: they do not believe in food programs.  Go down the list of what the media presents as an impact of the government shutdown, and you will see a list of the items that the Tea Party does not want funded by the government anyway.  Eight hundred thousand federal workers: that's their win.  Food safety inspection.  National Parks.

Fox News calls it a government slimdown.  The term isn't just a way for them to play down the impact of the shutdown -- it's a way to celebrate that government is getting smaller.  Who doesn't want to slim down?

The Tea Party has been clever to focus on Obamacare as the item they want to negotiate on.  If for some reason the Democrats begin to discuss this law, they win.  If, as the Tea Party knows, this law is a done deal, then they can confidently hide behind the impenetrable shield of the issue and radically reduce the size of the government.  It's win-win for the Tea Partiers.

I am a diehard Democrat, and I have wanted to give the President the benefit of the doubt for his five years in office.  But someone on his team doesn't get it.  It's not just the economy, stupid: it's jobs, stupid.  It's not about programs, because that plays into Tea Party hands.  It's about individuals and their paychecks.  As the countdown to the shutdown began, the President should have had a daily news conference, each day talking about jobs.  In the second person: make it immediate.  On the first day, he could talk to the 800,000.  On the next day, he could pick one ripple effect and warn another segment of the population about their paychecks.  And so on.  If the shutdown occurred, he should keep going.  He could have a different cabinet member speaking each day to a different segment under his or her purview.

He could declare that he would fund the Bureau of Labor Statistics as a critical government function, sending the message that he cares more about tracking the jobs of the citizens than the Tea Partiers.

Instead, the Democrats are gleefully watching the Tea Party tear the Republicans in half, not realizing that they are all in the same sinking canoe.  However, the premise we hear in that is that the Republicans have a problem, but the Tea Partiers have no issue tearing their own party in half, tearing the government to pieces. Their goal is not to become the majority power in the Republican Party.  If Tea Partiers no longer exist because there is no functioning government of the United States, then they win.

This is my paranoia.  We are dealing here with something much bigger than a movement within government: we are dealing with a movement that is truly trying to destroy government.  When the debt ceiling is not raised, and the economy tanks, and more people lose their jobs, the people will say, "The government messed this up," not "The Tea Partiers, the Republicans messed this up, so I think I'll vote Democratic."  Having the people turn on the government means that we no longer have government by the people, for the people.  We just have a world where those with the biggest guns win.

It's a decision!

Liveblog from the debate:

John McCain said that abortion is a difficult decision for a woman. Decison! Barack, call him on it!

Damn, he didn't. Oh, such a missed opportunity.

I'm going to throw up at this discussion.

Joe Biden's restraint

The context: tonight's debate, when Biden and Palin were discussing Israel.

BIDEN: Gwen, no one in the United States Senate has been a better friend to Israel than Joe Biden....

PALIN: ... But I'm so encouraged to know that we both love Israel, and I think that is a good thing to get to agree on, Senator Biden. I respect your position on that.

(What he should have said:)
BIDEN: Governor, my position is not yours to respect. I have been working for my entire political career to support and protect Israel, and that means I've been doing this since you were eight years old. You can say you are a friend to Israel, but that's like saying you're a friend to the author of your favorite bedtime story. You've never been to Israel, you've never worked on policy related to Israel, you've never acted to ensure Israel receives United States support. I have actually impacted the existence of Israel. Your respect is an insult.

The Palin Hypocrisy List

I'll be adding to this as I come across more. Not meant to be comprehensive. I can't expect to document them all, there are so many.

Emphases are all mine.

From a statement issued on Monday Sarah and Todd Palin:

“We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby...."

Bristol can make this choice even with legalized abortion.

Rick Scarborough, a pastor and the founder of the conservative advocacy group Vision America:“From what I see this family is dealing with it honorably. They are going to carry this baby to a full term as a further testimony of their commitment to life.” NYT 9/1/08. If abortion were illegal, they would not have the choice to be "honorable" and "testify" to their "commitment to life."

James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family ... commended her for “not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances.” NYT 9/1/08. So candidates should do more than just talk about their values: they should demonstrate them by having family members get pregnant and not have abortions?

Palin's Daughter Pregnant, Campaign Announces

"Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said. ..."


Embedded in this is that this 17-year-old had a decision. McCain/Palin oppose allowing women to make decisions for themselves about their pregnancies -- and, I'm sure, oppose choice for minors. They express pride that Bristol Palin made the decision they approve of ... but they don't want other girls to show the same courage by making that choice themselves.


Sarah Palin's choice to continue her pregnancy after she found out her child would have Down's syndrome is also touted as an act of courage. It was the first thing many of us learned about her. However, once again, she is being praised for the courage to make a decision she doesn't want others to make. The Republicans have to decide: are Bristol and Sarah Palin courageous women for the choices they make? If so, they should support the right of all women -- and girls -- to make the same choice.
About Sarah Palin
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Word of the day

Inspired by Sarah Palin:

Pandering

Runners up:

Creepy
Evil
Scary
Embarrassing
Exploitative of her Downs Syndrome infant
Same number of electoral votes as Delaware!

To the political cynics

I saw a movie tonight that is incredibly poorly named but incredibly well done. Amazing Grace -- you'd mix it up with Saving Grace, the story of a widow in an English village who grows hydroponic pot to make money.

It's a political thriller. Amazing Grace refers to the song, apparently written by a slave trader in the eighteenth century. It's the story of William Wilberforce and one of his many achievements in Parliament: the abolition of the slave trade.

It's a true story:

William Wilberforce led the abolition of the slave trade in England; he established the SPCA, the first free education movement, prison reform, child labor protection, and the first national gallery of art. At a time when the English Parliament represented only a tiny fraction of society, the landed fraction, and most seats were not contested.

I would suggest to anyone who is cynical about the power of our elected officials to do good that within any system a person with conviction can succeed. It takes a lot of work. Complaining is not being part of the problem. Working for whatever issues you believe in is the solution.

There's good and bad in all people, and that's why it's important to pay attention to the good in people.

Framing the discussion

I have so many Hillary topics, but I wanted to write them as analytical, not elegiac. So some brief thoughts before her speech today.

I think, and hope, that Democratic Obama-supporters will finally believe what I have believed, that Hillary is not a vicious, self-interested party-splitter. In the March 17 issue of Time, David Plouffe of the Obama campaign said, "The Clinton campaign strategy is simply going to be to try to run a scorched-earth campaign, which would be catastrophic for the party." I will honor how smart this was: Obama's team demonized Hillary by addressing process rather than content (or by nitpicking). They hoped in fact that the fear of dividing the party would cause voters to choose Obama (because he wasn't the party-divider, Hillary was). And I'm sure in many ways it worked. Certainly this idea was parroted by pundits in the media and in coffee shops.

Once again: I think this was clever. And ironic. In a year when the Democratic candidates rewrote the history books not just on gender and race but on process, Obama's campaign, a campaign whose content invoked hope, figured out how to get the dimension of fear into voter's minds. We Democrats feared that this particular break in process would cause Democrats to lose in November. Even very intelligent Democrats were so frightened that they didn't see the hope embedded in the dual campaign.

Hillary's process has not feared having two candidates who command powerful loyalty. As far as I know, she never accused Obama of splitting the party. (Ironically, and to her detriment, she in fact invoked fear in more traditional ways.) We should never sell her short: Hillary can and will take the loyalty she commands and use it for good. (And I have no doubt, had results gone the other way, that Obama would have used it for good as well.)

I'm sad that Democrats who repeated this fear began to write off Hillary. Listening to her speech to AIPAC on June 4 (in tears), I was reminded that she is a powerful and effective speaker who will absolutely support the party. And, once we hear her speech today (in tears), I look forward to Obama finding another way to run an inspiring campaign on hope and still find any way possible, including fear, to win in November.

Hillary's other problem: her bio

"In a place called Hope"

An essential part of a candidate's campaign is his or her biography. The romanticization of how he or she got to the present, what had to be overcome, the "This is Your Life" quality of that story, has been used to woo voters, to frame the discussion about the personal qualities of a candidate.

Imagine Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Convention, the nominee of the party. Then the video montage of her life comes on. What is in it? Can you imagine a video montage which includes anything from the Bill Clinton White House?

Does she include that, although extraordinarily talented, she put much of her career on hold for her husband? Oops, back to the Bill Clinton White House.

The montage takes candidates to their roots. And Hillary's roots are ... in the state that Obama represents. Hillary is a Chicagoan. She pumped up the AFL-CIO members last August in the Chicago debate by saying, "My late father was a fanatic Bears fan, so the idea that any of his children would be on the 10 yard line at Soldier Field is a tremendous accomplishment." Being from a rust belt city is an asset to her.

If she had been elected to the Senate from a state other than New York, it might have been different. But she's had to take off her Cubs hat to don a Yankees hat because you have to be a Yankees fan to win New York. Undying loyalty to any other team means you're not a real New Yorker.

Hillary Clinton, Part 1: She can do it.

A proud confession: I am a Hillary Clinton supporter. Which doesn't mean I'm anti-Barack Obama: I adore him. But I think Hillary is an extraordinarily talented and admirable woman. I'm proud that she didn't sit down and shut up in this campaign. I think she would make an incredible president -- and I still think she would be a better one than Barack.

The reason I think this is not because of her campaign, which undeniably has had many flaws. Beginning not with anything that came out of her mouth (or out of Bill's) but with her assumption about how to manage a campaign: she was blindsided by the creativity of Obama, by how he reached out to new voters for votes and for funds. Get with the program, Hillary: (1) The internet is nothing new, and we are living in a digital world, and (2) We've lost the past two presidential elections doing things the old way and need to think out of the box, make the pie bigger, to win this one. And she hasn't -- she's tried campaign the old way, only more perfectly -- which I have found disappointing.

The reason I put campaign blunders aside and support Hillary is that she is a superb politician. "Politician" in its uncharged sense, as someone who is adept at navigating politics. She entered the Senate and immediately became effective. She overcame resistence based on the perceptions of her (just a wife, just a carpetbagger, pushy, frankly partisan) to become someone who could work collegially with anyone on either side of the aisle. She has in fact not been frankly partisan: she is someone who knows how to work relationships and how to compromise to get things done.

Barack may be able to free us from partisanship through his vision and how he expresses it, but Hillary has shown she can do it through her actions.

Which is, I think, one of the two major flaws in her ability to become president: you can't run for a party nomination by showing how effective you are at working with the other party. All the Republican Senators who appreciate and respect Hillary are campaigning for the other party. So she has had to draw on her experiences as a former First Lady. To me this is not as persuasive as what she's accomplished as an elected official.

The bipartisanship argument is something to observe with John McCain, who wants to convince Democratic voters that his bipartisanship earns him their vote. What if Clinton and McCain ran against each other: would they debate who was more bipartisan? That's where actual values come in.

The great Democratic plan

For everyone who is frustrated with the Democratic primaries, who is worried that the party is damaging itself by having two candidates to continue to duke it out, keep in mind the following:

1. Americans love a competition. By taking the campaign to all 50 states, the Democrats are taking the motivation to participate to all 50 states. 
   
2. If the Democrats get out the vote, they win. There are more Democrats in this country than Republicans. In Texas, on March 4, almost three million Democrats turned out to vote, to the Republicans' 1.4 million. And this was when it was still a race: Mike Huckabee did not drop out of the race until that evening. 
   
3. The longer we have a Democratic competition, the more likely we are to have Democratic voter turnout in the red states of Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Idaho, and, if this keeps going, Puerto Rico, Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska; as well as in the perceived battleground states of Pennsylvania, Oregon, and New Mexico. 
   
4. If people vote in primaries, they are more likely to vote in the general election.
   
5. The rhetoric between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama reflects that they know this, and that in this home stretch they are going to work for party unity as they continue to compete.
   
6. Airing Democratic candidates' dirty laundry early enables the clothesline to be clear in time to focus on McCain's dirty laundry in the general election.
   
7. Enlisting new Democratic voters for this election could have effects that reach far beyond 2008.

I am very excited that the Democratic candidates continue to campaign, and I am optimistic about the process and the results.

Chris Matthews is prerecorded

One of the few political gabfest shows I watch (TiVo) is Chris Matthews. Turning it on today, the main topic was about how Bill Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama seem to be working, that Clinton has gotten into Barack's head. I double checked to see that I was watching the right week's show, and I was. Sadly, it's prerecorded. It's like looking two days into the past: how much things have changed after yesterday's rout of Clinton and Edwards in South Carolina.  I'm disappointed: I wanted to see Matthews gnaw on Barack's win.  

The secret Cheney impeachment vote

Another Cheney secret revealed!

News sources do not seem to be reporting that a vote on a bill to impeach Cheney occurred in the House of Representatives today. So I guess you heard it here first. I flipped on my TV and happened to surf across CSPAN, which showed people milling around the House floor and a caption, "Vote to table impeachment of Vice-President Cheney." It was high drama of the Robert's Rules variety, the kind of procedural details I like best. When I turned it on, the vote was very close, and I was outraged that even with a Democratic House we couldn't keep this bill alive. And then I noticed: the Democrats were voting for tabling, and the Republicans wanted to keep the bill alive. What was in that cough syrup I took?

It goes even further through the looking-glass. Our favorite Clevelander, Dennis Kucinich, had somehow snuck this bill onto the floor of the House this morning. Got it through the metal detectors and everything. He moved to impeach Cheney for misleading us into Iraq and for possibly considering misleading us into Iran. Not even for, say, flouting the rule of law.

One of the teams, I mean, parties, moved to table it (news is so slim I can't figure out who, but either one makes a good story); the Republicans, halfway through the voting process, decided to vote for impeachment just to mess with everyone (love that impish party), and the Democrats, after some orderly votes-on-whether-to-vote, finally shuttled it into the House Judiciary Committee to prevent having to have an instant debate and, well, vote.

It does restore my faith a bit that a representative can actually bring a bill to the floor and surprise people.